Welcome to the blog of actress, writer, and storyteller, Bernadette Nason!

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Praying for the Mantis

On my front flowerbed this morning, I spotted a tiny praying mantis, and right alongside it, hanging from another leaf, the ghost of a mantis, which I presume is its recently shed coat. As I watched, a large moth landed on the next stalk. I wondered if the mantis was praying that the moth would alight a bit closer. I prayed that it would--I wanted to see how the mantis would go about preparing its meal, as the moth was three times the size of the mantis, and could easily crush its head, just by sitting on it.

Still, it put me in mind of an incident that took place in Tripoli, Libya, just after I'd moved into a tiny villa in the residential area known as Georgimpopuli. In lieu of a Throwback Thursday photo, I thought I'd share that little anecdote.

My Austin front yard, June 2015. Praying mantis on flower stem in the centre. Ghost mantis on the right.

"On Graham's heels arrived a couple of oil company workers to
spray my little villa for pests. When they'd finished and I was showing them out, I noticed an enormous bright
green insect on the front porch wall. It was at least four inches long, with a
three-foot wing span...all right, the wings spanned about four inches, but that was scary
enough for me. I grabbed one of the men by the arm and shrieked so loudly, his
eyes nearly popped out of his head; poor fellow had no idea what was wrong. The
language barrier didn't help, but with me jumping up and down, gesticulating
wildly at the bug on the wall, he finally worked out what I wanted. He
transferred the creature into a nearby flowerbed. "Grazie," I said,
"Molte grazie!" I moved a bit closer to observe it. "It is beautiful,"
I said, pointing to the insect sitting innocently on the ground, "but I feel much
better now it's ten feet away from me!"

Unfortunately,
I was misunderstood. One of the workers trod on it with his black leather loafer. I
didn't want it to die; it was a splendid bug! Bloody language barrier. After
they'd gone, I took a good look at it lying dead and realized that it was a
praying mantis. I'd never seen one before; it was incredible. It really did
look as if it was praying. I still feel guilty for having a living thing
murdered. Mind you, had it been a spider, I'd have pulverized it with a shovel,
just to be sure.

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My mum (in England) and I (wherever I happened to be living) used to write each other every week...snail-mail letters, of course. When we both got computers and email became popular, we wrote every day...about everything, from the weather to what our neighbors were doing, from the political situation to popular shows on the telly. When she died, not only did I miss my lovely mum, I missed our regular written conversations; and I lost my daily writing fix. Now I admit the messages were sometimes ridiculously banal but they were often hilarious and always fun to receive. So to start with at least, I'm going to imagine my blog is a note to my mum in the hope that you'll like reading it as much I liked reading her notes to me.